Wednesday, July 30, 2008

For the past week I have been trying to get an answer out of the Josh Goot camp on Goot’s recently stated intentions to jump international Fashion Week ship from New York to London. But while Goot and his local PR team have been mum on the subject, word overnight from London Fashion Week PR head Anna Orsini is that “Yes, he is showing in London”.

With the Spring/Summer 2009 event running from September 14-19, LFW organisers must have a pretty good idea what’s shaping up for their schedule. That said, Orsini did not clarify if Goot is showing on- or off-shedule. One assumes she’s talking about her own schedule.

Plans can also change at the last minute – not to mention the vital ingredient of sponsorship, which is what usually swings an emerging designer’s decision to show at any Fashion Week.

In February, the London-born and now –based designer, Richard Nicoll, who grew up in Australia, announced that he would be showing at Australian Fashion Week’s Spring/Summer 0809 showcase.

Nicoll made the announcement in an interview on the LFW website in fact (which has since moved on the LFW site). At the time Nicoll was also in negotiations with local representatives, and, according to AFW organiser IMG, IMG itself.

Just as I went to press with the story however, Nicoll’s Westfield sponsorship fell through and the Sydney show was placed on the backburner.

London will be a good fit for Goot, who debuted his signature line at Australian Fashion Week in May 2005 – after staging a big buzz off-schedule show the previous year with his now defunct streetwear label Platform.

Goot made his international runway debut off-schedule at New York Fashion Week in September 2006 and he showed off-schedule in New York for the next two consecutive seasons.

Although as this bog revealed last week, Alice McCall is doing the reverse by heading from an off-schedule LFW show to off-schedule in New York, where she recently picked up a dozen new stockists, at least two other Australian brands have described the current US retail climate as “a disaster”.

In London, Goot is sold at a number of influential boutiques, including Browns and the high profile boutique Start, which is operated by Brix Smith-Start, a former guitarist with 80s post-punk outfit The Fall and her husband, Philip Start, the founder of the Woodhouse menswear chain. Goot is also now repped by London's Rainbow Wave agency.

On April 27th The Independent newspaper dedicated a standalone story to Goot, headlined, “Wizard of Oz” - comparing him to minimalist masters Calvin Klein, Helmut Lang and Raf Simons in the opening paragraph.

Then on Sunday, The Times singled Goot out as the key Australian fashion “name to know” – in its story headlined “Australian fashion gets hip”.

Goot did manage to garner quite a lot of press buzz in New York. With nearly 300 shows on in years past however, New York Fashion Week is a monster event.

In May, Goot told he that he felt a little lost in NYC.

“I felt like we were getting lost in the crowd or that people weren’t connecting with what we were doing properly” said Goot, who has since also returned to live in Sydney after an 18-month NY stint.

Of London, he noted: “I think also we’re still a young label and we are still finding out feet and figuring it all out. And I think London is a better incubator for that really than New York is. But you know, we’re not from England, in the same way that we weren’t from America”.

Have a look at the London Fashion Week channel on http://www.t5m.com/london-fashion-week , with some great fashion coverage. We have just finished filming at London Fashion Week and have some inspiring exclusive videos on our site. We have footage of all the catwalk shows and backstage interviews with the designers. The runway shows and interviews with the celebrities are on there too.